President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is reportedly moving to dismantle the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces—a decision that could grind thousands of criminal investigations to a halt.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the administration has ordered the Reagan-era task force, created to take down drug cartels, human trafficking rings, and transnational crime syndicates, to shut down by Sept. 30. Its Virginia-based fusion center will also close, and the unit’s 2026 fiscal year budget will be “zeroed out.”
The timing is bizarre. This is the same task force that helped capture Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, possibly the largest drug trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere—and seize over $2 billion from criminal enterprises. Why shut it down?
As is normally the case with Trump, there’s no clear explanation—just a sudden directive and more chaos. The move comes just weeks after Trump abruptly fired the task force’s director, Adam Cohen, despite reportedly collaborating with him on a new strategic memo.
The cut is part of a broader bloodletting across the federal government. Trump’s 2026 budget proposes slashing over $163 billion in domestic spending, targeting everything from education funding to medical research.
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The White House is also pressing to eliminate funding for several of the DOJ’s law enforcement offices, despite Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric. Other agencies—including U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency—are facing similar attacks, all in the name of cost-cutting.
But OCDETF isn’t some bloated bureaucracy: Its $250 million budget is federal pocket change. And if Trump is serious about dismantling cartels, this move completely undercuts his own messaging.
Trump and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche
Even more bizarrely, it contradicts a policy directive issued just two months ago. In a March 6 memo obtained by Bloomberg, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche planned to use OCDETF central as part of “Operation Take Back America,” the administration’s sweeping initiative to eliminate cartels, trafficking, and organized crime.
“Operation Take Back America requires that OCDETF surge existing resources to address the Justice Department’s core enforcement priorities,” Blanche wrote to DOJ divisions.
Now that same task force is being dismantled, blindsiding agents and prosecutors who are still handling thousands of active cases. Bloomberg reports that around 40 jobs are at immediate risk, and the department is already preparing to cancel building leases and terminate contracts.
Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Trump has a habit of firing people and upending departments, watching things fall apart, and then scrambling to rehire them once the damage is done. If this feels like another impulsive move driven by optics over outcomes, that’s probably because it is.
Sure, Trump might eventually come crawling back, asking these workers to return. But as Bloomberg notes, many aren’t waiting around to see if that happens. If this is yet another haphazard mistake from the White House, let’s hope someone realizes it before it’s too late to fix.
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